USC Annenberg Communications Professor Marita Sturken examines the role celebrity plays in the lives of ordinary people who, through circumstances of their own making or by chance, find themselves the subjects of public scrutiny.

Presenters Elizabeth Currid (USC) and Sarah Williams (Columbia University) have captured patterns of the cultural production system by geo-coding over 6,000 events and 300,000 Getty Images photos taken in Los Angeles and New York City.

Read the meeting notes of a discussion with USC Art History Professor Richard Meyer on Robert Mapplethorpe and Dirty Pictures, a Showtime movie about Mapplethorpe and the Dennis Barrie censorship trial.

What is entertainment? What is entertainment studies? The Norman Lear Center takes this on through a photo essay and incisive text. To order a copy of this award-winning brochure, email us at enter@usc.edu.

Lear Center Senior Fellow David Bollier and Robert McChesney address the changing politics of the media, technology and culture, including how corporations misuse copyright and trademark law to stifle creativity and free speech.